jabbearwock

What Battlestar Galactica has brought me to.

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 05:39:43 GMT

I think the new BG is the best scifi series ever, and I've found a wonderful man that likes it too that I've been emailing and chatting with. He asked me the big Cylon question, "Do humans deserve to survive?,"and here's my reply:

Ok, the BIG question. The question itself has the presumption that survival is on a merit system. Is the fittest most deserving of survival? And is that the most morally, physically, or intellectually fit? Because of my vested interest, I think we do deserve to survive, as much as any other species that I'm currently aware of. I suppose I have a Catholic bias (I'm a bitter former Catholic) in that I believe that everyone has inherent worth that status or behavior cannot change. Rich or poor, guilty or innocent, fat or thin, we are invested with life by some agency that deemed us worthy to exist. Whether that agent is science, a divine entity, or dumb luck, I trust it more than any judge or jury, and certainly more than Cylons who, even if created by the most intelligent humans, are created by a flawed creator--and not flawed as in Original Sin, but flawed by limited perception. Which brings up the question, if we are made in the image of God and we are flawed, is God's image flawed or our perception of his image? Could it be that we are perfect little flesh machines whose only purpose is to reproduce and die so that we survive as a species?

What do you think?

Does A Bear Piss in the Woods?

Thu, 04 May 2006 19:48:06 GMT

Read more about this book.

Letter to Denise
by Hayden Carruth

Remember when you put on that wig
From the grab bag and then looked at yourself
In the mirror and laughed, and we laughed together?
It was a transformation, glamorous flowing tresses.
Who knows if you might not have liked to wear
That wig permanently, but of course you
Wouldn’t. Remember when you told me how
You meditated, looking at a stone until
You knew the soul of the stone? Inwardly I
Scoffed, being the backwoods pragmatic Yankee
That I was, yet I knew what you meant. I
Called it love. No magic was needed. And we
Loved each other too, not in the way of
Romance but in the way of two poets loving
A stone, and the world that the stone signified.
Remember when we had that argument over
Pee and piss in your poem about the bear?
“Bears don’t pee, they piss,” I said. But you were
Adamant. “My bears pee.” And that was that.
Then you moved away, across the continent,
And sometimes for a year I didn’t see you.
We phoned and wrote, we kept in touch. And then
You moved again, much farther away, I don’t
Know where. No word from you now at all. But
I am faithful, my dear Denise. And I still
Love the stone, and, yes, I know its soul.

Poem-A-Day

Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:40:43 GMT

Read more about this book.

Example and Admonition
by Dick Barnes

My father’s admonition: when given
a choice, choose the path that
leads uphill, always,

so up we went, but all led down soon after:
our destination Deep Creek, where water had gathered
by taking every downhill opportunity.

We thought of that when the higher path turned down,
but no one mentioned it then, nor ever, in fact, til now.
Two lessons: and though sometimes I feel clever,

and have read the Chou I book all about that water,
I’ve not forsaken either one. If there be something in a man
that flows uphill, he has to go with it

whatever sweat or humiliation may attend his going.
Done patiently, this is called "matching heaven with heaven."
Otherwise, just strife.

The wonderful thing about Tiggers (NWS)

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 17:04:01 GMT

Is Tiggers are wonderful things
Their tops are made out of rubber
Their bottoms are made out of ~~springs~~ Elmos

http://livedigital.com/content/47985/

Poem-A-Day

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 16:08:08 GMT

Read more about this book.

The Bearhug
by Nick Laird

It’s not as if I’m intending on spending the rest of my life
doing this:
besuited, rebooted, filing to work, this poem a fishbone in
my briefcase.
The scaffolding clinging to St Paul’s is less urban ivy than
skin, peeling off.

A singular sprinkler shaking his head spits at the newsprint
of birdshit.
It’s going unread: Gooseberry Poptarts, stale wheaten
bread, Nutella and toothpaste.
An open-armed crane turns to embrace the aeroplanes
passing above.

I hadn’t the foggiest notion. Imagine: me, munching
cardboard and rubbish,
but that’s just what they meant when they said, Come in,
you’re dead-beat,
take the weight off your paws, you’re a big weary grizzly
with a hook through his mouth,

here, have some of this love.

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 16:53:32 GMT

April 19, 2006

Read more about this book.

The Blue Terrance
by Terrance Hayes

If you subtract the minor losses,
you can return to your childhood too:
the blackboard chalked with crosses,

the math teacher's toe ring. You
can be the black boy not even the buck-
toothed girls took a liking to:

the match box, these bones in their funk
machine, this thumb worn smooth
as the belly of a shovel. Thump. Thump.

Thump. Everything I hold takes root.
I remember what the world was like before
I heard the tide humping the shore smooth,

and the lyrics asking: How long has your door
been closed? I remember a garter belt wrung
like a snake around a thigh in the shadows

of a wedding gown before it was flung
out into the bluest part of the night.
Suppose you were nothing but a song

in a busted speaker? Suppose you had to wipe
sweat from the brow of a righteous woman,
but all you owned was a dirty rag? That's why

the blues will never go out of fashion:
their half rotten aroma, their bloodshot octaves of
consequence; that's why when they call, Boy, you're in

trouble. Especially if you love as I love
falling to the earth. Especially if you're a little bit
high strung and a little bit gutted balloon. I love

watching the sky regret nothing but its
self, though only my lover knows it to be so,
and only after watching me sit

and stare off past Heaven. I love the word No
for its prudence, but I love the romantic
who submits finally to sex in a burning row-

house more. That's why nothing's more romantic
than working your teeth through
the muscle. Nothing's more romantic

than the way good love can take leave of you.
That's why I'm so doggone lonesome, Baby,
yes, I'm lonesome and I'm blue.

Poem-A-Day (interesting choice for Easter)

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 19:30:34 GMT

Read more about this book.

excerpt from "Howl"
by Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
       madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
       looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
       connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
       ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
       up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
       cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
       contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
       saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
       ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
       hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
       among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
       publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
       skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
       ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
       to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
       Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
       Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
       torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
       cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and
       lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
       Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
       tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
       dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
       storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
       blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
       vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
       lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
       ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
       until the noise of wheels and children brought
       them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
       battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
       in the drear light of Zoo...

Poem-A-Day

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 19:12:13 GMT

The Book for My Brother

Tomaz Salamun

Young Cops
by Tomaž Šalamun

All young cops have soft
mild eyes. Their upbringing is lavish.
They walk between blueberries and ferns,
rescuing grannies from rising waters.
With the motion of a hand they ask for
a snack from those plastic bags. They
sit down on tree stumps, looking at valleys
and thinking of their moms. But woe is me
if a young one gets mad. A Scourge
of God rings, with a club that later you can
borrow to blot your bare feet.
Every cop wears a cap, his head murmuring under it
A sled rushes down a slope in his dreams.
Whomever he kills, he brings spring to,
whomever he touches has a wound inscribed.
I would give my granny and my
grandpa, my mom and my pa, my wife
and my son to a cop to play with.
He would tie up my granny’s white hair,
but he’d probably chop up my son
on the stump of a tree. The cop himself would be sad
that his toy was broken. That’s the way they are
when smoking pot: melancholy. They take off
their caps and breathe their tears into them.
Actually, they’re like camels riding
in the desert, as if it were the wet palm of a hand.

Poem-A-Day from April 5

Mon, 10 Apr 2006 23:38:00 GMT


	The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth-Century Elegy edited by Lynn Strongin
	At their most mournful, with praise and love and raw emotion, poets throughout time have put their grief to paper. The elegy and its inherent drama---the inevitable struggle between love and death---are showcased in The Sorrow Psalms, a collection of twentieth-century elegies edited by poet Lynn Strongin. Divided into five thematic sections, the elegies convey the impact of death and its aftermath; focus on the loss of family, lovers, and dear friends; contend with the loss of a child; deal with violent death; and seek to look beyond death to find some kind of resolution. The traditional stages of grieving---denial, anger, depression, and acceptance---are evident, either singly in the expression of one profound emotion or all at once, in these elegies. Strongin's introduction explains the origins of the elegy and its evolution through the twentieth century. Format: Paperback Publication Date: 6/1/2006 Price: $24.95
University of Iowa Press is a proud sponsor of National Poetry Month See other new books from University of Iowa Press Go >

	What Came to Me by Jane Kenyon I took the last dusty piece of china out of the barrel. It was your gravy boat, with a hard, brown drop of gravy still on the porcelain lip. I grieved for you then as I never had before. From The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth-Century Elegy edited by Lynn Strongin. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

Poem A Day: from Poets.org

Sat, 01 Apr 2006 07:35:26 GMT

Happy Poetry Month!

	Averno
	by Louise Gluck
	Louise Glück is the author of numerous books of poetry, including among many others The Seven Ages (Ecco Press, 2001); Vita Nova (1999), winner of Boston Book Review’s Bingham Poetry Prize; Meadowlands (1996); The Wild Iris (1992), which received the Pulitzer Prize and the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. AVERNO, her first collection to be published by FSG, mines the ancient myth of Persephone for the light that it sheds on the experience of death and dying. Though these seventeen lyrical poems can be read easily in one sitting, their ambition and seriousness are palpable; in them, Glück strikes a deft balance of depth and lightness, of universality and intimacy, her words mediating in a revelatory way between the ancient and modern worlds. AVERNO is the work of a master at the height of her powers. Format: Hardcover Publication Date: March 14, 2006 Price: $22.00
Farrar, Straus and Giroux is a proud sponsor of National Poetry Month See other new books from Farrar, Straus and Giroux Go >

	A Myth of Devotion by Louise Glück When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars. Let Persephone get used to it slowly. In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting. A replica of earth except there was love here. Doesn't everyone want love? He waited many years, building a world, watching Persephone in the meadow. Persephone, a smeller, a taster. If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all. Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. And when one turns, the other turns— That's what he felt, the lord of darkness, looking at the world he had constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind that there'd be no more smelling here, certainly no more eating. Guilt? Terror? The fear of love? These things he couldn't imagine; no lover ever imagines them. He dreams, he wonders what to call this place. First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden. In the end, he decides to name it Persephone's Girlhood. A soft light rising above the level meadow, behind the bed. He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you're dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true. "A Myth of Devotion" from Averno by Louise Glück. Copyright © 2006 by Louise Glück. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Will Success Change Me?

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 19:37:00 GMT

I've recently returned from the annual American Comparative Literature Association conference at Princeton University where I presented my extended critical essay to a clump of scholars wedged into a small room in the East Pyne building, which gave me a scary and exciting feeling of deja vu (the building, not the clump of scholars or presenting my paper) until I remembered that many scenes from A Beautiful Mind were filmed there. My paper being pick from several hundred others who responded to the call for papers tells me that I must face the fact that I am a poet and a scholar, too close to "a gentleman and a scholar" for me.  Being perceived as a gentleman could ruin my reputation. Being perceived as a scholar could give me one.

Actually, I think that I maintained my aura of bothersome poet by attempting to dread my locks. Anyone who has ever had dreadlocks or witnessed anyone growing dreadlocks know that it requires a commitment and friends, who have had or helped someone have the snaky coif, to help. I had neither. Well, I think the problems may have been over-commitment and unwillingness to ask for help. What ended up happening was that I traversed the Princeton campus appearing as if I had cat turds in my hair. My fine and thinning cracker hair does not mat in an attractive manner.

In a misguided attempt to beautify my gnarled head scape, I kept rubbing, twisting, and waxing the uncooperative tendrils until just before the flight home I rubbed, twisted, and waxed a dread off my head. The pointy fellow that once stood erect on the center front of my hairline began to droop. To increase its morale, I gave it extended attention, rubbing and twisting it, until exhausted, it fell into my lap. This event gave me a deja vu that I will not go into except to say that it too involved a pointy fellow needing a morale boost.

Luck would have it that I was able to improve my situation in a literary manner.  In my carry-on bag, I had my Missouri Review cap that I receive as a gift for buying a two year subscription to the magazine. I used it both literally and metaphorically to cover my dreads or lack there of.

When I examined the fallen dread, I was unable to deny that it looked remarkably like something a cat shat or hacked up. Having upon my head something that came from either end of a cat was not the look I had hoped to sport to my first conference at which I was to present a scholarly paper. That no one snickered or ran screaming from me has given me a new respect for Comparative Literature scholars. And I have a new pride in myself that a mere MFA in Creative Writing student with questionable hair was able to hold his own among colleagues that are in a discipline sometimes considered more "scholarly" than the workshop-centered creative writing discipline.

Success has changed me. I look back on this experience with less dread (no pun intended, but what a happy accident) than I would have before I had poems published and papers presented. Success can really boost self-esteem and change perspectives. It's taken less than a week for me to be able to look back and laugh at my hairy faux pas. Frankly if success doesn't change a person, she's not taking full advantage of her position.

Fri, 10 Jun 2005 07:21:00 GMT

You're Lolita!

by Vladimir Nabokov

Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with
sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every
way, though you admit that this probably isn't the best and you're not sure what causes
this desire. Nonetheless, you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and
probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real.
Please stay away from children.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Sun, 15 May 2005 07:59:51 GMT

Today's poem is from The Aerialist by Victoria Hallerman, just published by Bright Hill Press. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
Find out more about Bright Hill Press

To find out more about the Academy of American Poets and its programs, including National Poetry Month, visit www.poets.org.

In honor of National Poetry Month,
the Academy of American Poets brings you Poem-a-Day.

Aerialist
by Victoria Hallerman

Her life is the wire—she can never come down.
Sometimes she stops and sits on it to eat,
even sleeps there, her whole body stretched
as the wire is stretched. In sleep
she keeps her balance,
feet curled like a monkey’s
the habit of grasping:

she has never fallen.
She never will, not entirely.
Once in a while a slip
causes her to hang for a moment by her hands.
It isn’t the danger of falling that slices through her dreams
but the wire itself, drawing
a line through her body,
leaving a mark on the soles of her feet,

her buttocks, her back.
If she were to cut the wire (she dreams of this)
the sky would break like a mirror into the sea
and nothing would be whole again.
Virgin of the Apocalypse standing on a crescent moon,
she is keeping
Heaven and Earth apart.

Sat, 02 Apr 2005 11:57:50 GMT

Dance the night away by karchan85
Name
What you Look like
The Music	Reggae

Quiz created with MemeGen!

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 19:11:00 GMT

The oddest things you come across while researching intertextuality on the internet

Sun, 27 Mar 2005 20:34:32 GMT

http://www.starchamber.com/archives/001377.html

I'm dylexic. The Hokey Pokey was an exercise in frustration until I started wearing a watch. By that time, I had graduated to The Bump and The Hustle, which prepared me for The Achy Breaky (if one can ever be prepared for The Achy Breaky).

Ok, back to the Rainer Maria Rilke and Laurie Anderson essay I must have done before Deadwood, Carnivale and The L Word.

My Final Packet

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 05:11:22 GMT

In my MFA program, we send a packet consisting of 5 poems and a couple of essays every 3 - 4 weeks to our mentor. I'm working on the last one of this semester. Which sounds more interesting for a short essay? Rainer Maria Rilke and Laurie Anderson: Elegies and Angels or Laurie Anderson: Narrative Collagist.

95% Existentialist, 70% Hedonist--I'm free to choose, so where's the orgy.

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 04:33:45 GMT

You scored as Existentialism. Your life is guided by the concept of Existentialism: You choose the meaning and purpose of your life.

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.”

--Jean-Paul Sartre

“It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.”

--Blaise Pascal

</td>

Existentialism

95%

Hedonism

70%

Utilitarianism

65%

Justice (Fairness)

40%

Kantianism

35%

Strong Egoism

25%

Devine Command

20%

Apathy

Nihilism

What philosophy do you follow? (v1.01)
created with QuizFarm.com

Ten things I've done in my life that you may not have

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 12:13:44 GMT

1. Applied to and was accepted into an MFA in Creative Writing program without a high school diploma or undergrad degree (well, I do have a GED).

2. Spent two months in Highland Hospital in Asheville, NC, a psychiatric hospital where James Taylor is rumored to have been a patient.

3. Met one of the heirs of the McIlhenny family that makes Tabasco sauce while in Highland Hospital.

4. Diagnosed my rare genetic connective disorder (Ehler-Danlos Syndrome) myself by studying medical textbooks and journals after 20 years of seeing clueless doctors.

5. Spend a stormy evening huddled in a stairwell with Sena Jeter Naslund and Molly Peacock during a tornado warning. It was a dark and stormy night.

6. Was chased and attacked by a menacing flock of rogue geese while visiting Twin Oaks Intentional Community in Virginia.

7. Dined on leg and breast of one of the rogue geese after the drummer of Grateful Dead volunteered to kill them, which cause a rift between the vegan and non-vegan community members. The viciousness of these geese changed some of the vegans' culinary orientation--a few even started using eiderdown comforters.

8. Won 3rd place in a statewide competition for cosmetology students at a Kentucky hairdresser's convention.

9. Helped eccentric, rich Aunt undress after the battery pack from her twinkling Xmas tree sweatshirt got caught in her belt loop.

10. Played cards with a serial killer that worked the front desk of the dorm I lived in in the early 80s.

Funny Tagline

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 12:19:46 GMT

4 out of 5 Baptist divorcees want gays to stop undermining the sanctity of
marriage.

Great Lands o' Goshen, It's a Green River Blog

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 01:15:48 GMT

Which is not a green river frog and none of us, as far as I know, live near or in the Green River. Still, the name is musical with its ripple of upbeat "Rs": Green River Writers scribble in the Green River Blog. Long may it and we live!!

http://www.greenriverwriters.org/grwblog/

St. Magical Mark of Sad Eyed Art http://www.keane-eyes.com/

I'm Alive

Sat, 16 Nov 2002 23:24:22 GMT

Life has been distracting. I've rekindled my old love of poetry and rejoined a local writers club called the Green River Writers. Went on a 4 day retreat last weekend with them. It was real laid-back retreat, more of a social recharging than a weekend of workshoping. That was nice, but I think I'd prefer sometime inbetween the two. I was inspired just from being with 22 other people who understand becoming orgasmic over a line of poetry or just a word.

It was a bit odd getting back with a group I hadn't been with in over 10 years. Many remembered me who I couldn't remember in the least. That either says bad things about my memory or good things about the impression I make. The ones I did remember had changed in appearance (they were simply older just like me), but not in personality or likeability. I step right back in like I'd never been gone.

A life lesson I've learned is that if you are with someone that becomes your whole life, that distracts you to the point of not doing the things you love with people who also love doing it, you are neglecting yourself. Rejoining the Green River Writers has been one of the major steps of washing that man out of my hair, as it were. And I wore a poem about it.

A Tangled Mess

How easily you leave the ground.
Gravity fights, but sky loves you best.
You hold no graveness in your form,
balloon-hollow and helium-light,
this side of astral. Sorrow

is stuffed in the thin string
tied to your butt -- you trail your grief;
float upward, unaware
when you're snagged.

I tried to untangle you,
when struck by a violent wind,
ripped from my hand
and left knotted in my hair.

Three years after I cut you loose,
I still find bits of sadness in the bathtub snare.

A Night To Make An Journal Entry Of

Fri, 02 Aug 2002 06:26:25 GMT

I've had the greatest time, tonight. I just got in from going out with friends I've known since the early 80's. We discovered this place called The Red Lounge which is in the trendy part of Louisville on Frankfort Ave. It was a gas station in a former life which gave it an interesting lay out and two garage doors that they open when it isn't so fucking hot and humid.

We sat way in the back by the pool tables and watched this nice group of lesbians play pool (not a gay bar but one in which a group of lesbians feel comfortable). It was me and my friends Rebecca, Steve, Jimmy and Bede, a old friend visiting from St. Louis. Bede is interesting because he's a Benedictine Priest at the St. Louis Abbey. He's being what he calls exiled to England because he and the Abbot don't get along. He'll be studying History at Oxford. If only I could get exiled in such a way.

Rebecca and Steve Bodnar I have known since 1984. I met them shortly before they married that same year. They were part of the original group that I started playing D&D with. We have been through so many life turning points I just couldn't imagine life with out them. I love them something awful. Rebecca was kind of the photo archivist of our group of friends. She documented my many hairstyles and color as I went from a skinny Gay Clone to a New Wave/Punk wannabe to a Goth wannabe. Fortunately and unfortunately, she missed documenting my growth into the middle aged, hefty bear I am now. Steve has always been that great GM (Game Master for those who don't know the joys of role-playing games) and straight male friend that let me be as queer as I want to be without feeling threatened. Oh the many moves he has lent his muscles too! Also, when we were both very poor college students off for the summer, we killed a lot of free time together.

Jimmy is a college friend I've know since 1982. We were both Theater majors and did oh so many productions together at Spalding University here in Louisville. I can't imagine a better friend. After we got so fed up with dorm life, we faced the cold big world together as roommates. Although I went through many suicidal depressions and attempts in my early twenties, he never turned away from me. I went through money problems, drinking problems and he was always there (sometimes sitting in the dark because I didn't pay the electric bills). Then, he nursed me through the awful break-up with Eric 3 years ago.

The reason this night was so nice is that we had really grown apart as friends sometimes just from life circumstances. We were lamenting that fact at the Bodnar's pool party this past Sunday. We were missing how much time we used to spend together, how spontaneous we use to be. Work schedules, energy levels and stuff makes it hard to be as flexible. So, we've decided to plan to be spontaneous every Thursday around 6pm when everyone gets off work. The time may not be spontaneous but the activity will be. Friends are just nice to have around!

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